I’ve experienced as many fire alarms in the last three weeks as I did in my entire four years of high school. There was one instance of four fire alarms in a single day. Last week, two occurred about five minutes apart somewhere around 4 a.m. It sucks to have your sleep interrupted. It sucks to be sent out in the cold unprepared. But the alarms have brought Allison Hall residents together in a way that weekly munchies or intramural sports could not. The fire alarm siren has become the unofficial battle cry of Allison Hall.
The alarms have given Allison residents a unique kind of common experience that a planned activity could not — simultaneously frustrating, funny and unexpected. Who could forget the night hundreds of us gathered outside the dorm in the small hours of the night, siren screaming inside? We waited as the Area Coordinator demanded, in vain, that the drunk girl who set off the alarm reveal herself. We braced the cold together and wondered how the authorities knew the girl’s room number, but couldn’t find her.
Outside, there were girls in bathrobes with wet hair who were caught on the way back from the shower; guys with their eyes half open, still slightly drunk from the night’s activities –- these are part of the fire alarm charm. There’s something about these vulnerable late-night moments that makes us a little closer than we were before.
As the week went on, the temperature dropped, but the false alarms kept sounding and the idea of leaving the room became increasingly unappealing. At the next 4 a.m. fire alarm, I didn’t go outside. Instead, I popped my head into the hallway and saw neighbors weighing the same option: sleep and risk death by fire, or hazard the cold. If that’s not a shared experience, I don’t know what is.
After it’s over, we commiserate and share our personal fire alarm narratives. It’s a pretty reliable way to start a conversation with another Allison resident. The morning after a late-night alarm, some recall only a groggy awareness of the siren. Some remember being forced out in the middle of dinner (one guy brought his plate outside with him). Others say they returned home to the siren blaring and their friends gathered outside. Still others made the conscious decision to say “Fuck that” and go back to sleep.
Northwestern students (even freshmen) are wrapped up in their own worlds. Our time and focus are consumed by work, friends, music, drinking, dancing and sleeping, to name a few. This is a great quality of the university: People here pursue their passions relentlessly. But we need an occasional reminder, an alarm, that we inhabit a world outside the little ones we create.
Some of the best moments in life, and, I predict, in college, are the ones in which you are freed, if only briefly, from the comforts of your own world. These moments are, by nature, spontaneous and unexpected. Being forced outside (or at least into the hallway) without notice in the middle of the night with hundreds of your dorm mates is certainly a good start.
Hopefully the university will make it clear to residents if the next fire turns out to be a real one. Apologies to the fire department, which has to waste its time checking up on us a few times a day; but keep those alarms coming, because sparks are flying at Allison.